I was watching speed runs and decided to try out the tactic of parrying pursuer to kill him. I figured that way he'd kill me quick or I'd kill him quick. I'm not great at parrying so I grabbed the buckler. When I got into the fight I successfully parried but lined up wrong, so the ballistae missed the persuer. He then promptly destroyed the big weapon.

Thinking quickly, I positioned in front of the other missile launcher and parried him AGAIN! This time I shot him, but the alignment wasn't right and he only took a quarter health in damage. So I ran around and lined up and parried that son of a bitch 3 more times for the giant arrow win! It was awesome.

Side note: you get extra parry frames with the buckler whether you have enough dex to block with it or not. Go nuts, strength characters!

Yeah, I parried him as well on my latest run after watching that speed run someone posted. It worked out perfectly. Moved through the fog gate into position, parried his first attack, used the ballista, and then attacked him one more time and he was dead. It was pretty awesome. The fight lasted less than 10 seconds all in all. It's a pretty sweat feeling also.

I killed him by just dodging his first attack and running straight to a ballista and shooting him for 95% of his life. If you position yourself so his lunge puts him in the path of the ballista you don't need to parry.

That sounds like it wouldn't work as he immediately moves after attacking. You need the parry to keep him stunned in place. It didn't work for me anyway.

@zevvion: Luck might have been involved, but I dodge-rolled and immediately sprinted without locking on. By the time I got to the ballista he had recovered from his lunge and started floating up to me. I just got the ballista off in time.

I tried parrying him on NG+ and got it on the first try. I was so shocked I actually got it I didn't think to use the ballista, but just rolling into his attacks makes him completely ineffectual anyway.

I'm always so bad at parrying in these games that I often don't even bother trying. As such I always fight Pursuer the old fashioned way, preferably on that square platform as opposed to the official boss arena. All of that added spaces make him to be quite easy, or even easier rather once you've nailed his patterns down and just roll through everything.

@yummylee: You mean earlier in the game in Forrest of Lost Giants? Aren't you underleveled there? I know you can evade every attack he tries, but won't it take forever to kill him with the low amount of damage you'll do?

I started NG+ and beat him in the square arena next to the second bonfire where the wall blows up (incidentally I played the entire game without ever knowing that wall blows up and creates a shortcut..)

So far NG+ isn't too bad. One thing I don't like is the way your weapon makes that muffled sound when hitting red phantoms - somehow it really throws me off.

Depends on when you decide to face him really. You could just not climb up on to the platform and then tackle him whenever you so choose; the traditional path I suppose would be after you've at least beaten The Lost Giant. But yeah, so long as you don't actually face the Pursuer in his official domain, you can let him hang there until you're ready. Don't get anything extra out of it, though, but the added space is beneficial all the same for tackling him a little more traditionally.

And of course you only get the one attempt; if you die, or even if you accidentally fall off, that bird will take him away again forcing you to then go against him back at his boss arena.

If you have been leveling your pyromancy, I would suggest you use that as it was quite helpful for me especially with the large black knights.

Er, wrong thread? :P

I was proud of myself the other day too, but because I beat him in the first encounter on that big stone platform. He's quite easy to dodge, but I still only had 2 estus and was pretty scrawny. Patience, a few throwing knives, and my trusty Channeler's Trident won through in the end, doing about 60-80 damage a hit. Also, somebody invaded me in the forest earlier as I was fighting the Heide knight, and I snuck through with a victory there as well, skin of my teeth style. I felt like an absolute badass.

Wait, how do you blow up that wall? (I also just beat him in that area for the first time, on NG+.)

@mlarrabee: Throw a firebomb at the barrels lined up against it. I only found out accidentally myself from the tosser hurling them from the above platform.

As mentioned, either get the hollowed soldier to throw a bomb at you as you're standing by the barrels in the corner, or hit them yourself with some fire inducing weapon/spell. Although come to think of it, it doesn't create a shortcut to any meaningful location.

@yummylee: @humanity: Thanks! I blew it open about an hour ago, and I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the geometry; I didn't think that overlook was anywhere near the bonfire alcove.

And, actually, when I read your post, @humanity, I thought you were referring to the cave mouth directly opposite that wall, the one blocked with boulders, since Vinny and Brad mentioned in the Quick Look that there was probably a way to clear it.

@mlarrabee: oh no that clearly leads nowhere. Although.. Who knows..

Ah, I see. Still, I'd take the 'official' location. He is extremely easy there. Just parry and shoot the ballista. He's not that difficult, but it's a long tedious fight. I replay these games a lot, so being able to kill him quickly saves me some frustration. I don't think he's that fun of a boss to fight. I like Vendrick much better as I fight him similarly I would the Pursuer (if I don't use the ballista), but he is a little less predictable which makes it more fun. The Pursuer feels like I'm just going through the motions if you know what I mean.

Nope. My strategy for fighting him solo involved using the ballista on the left. I never parried him. You can bait him into doing the 3 hit combo, run to the ballista, and get off a clean shot.

Ah, okay. Good to know. Still, his very first attack is always the same one and you can parry that one and have him stunned into position. Shoot the ballista, then one more hit and you win. If we're talking purely about being efficient, that still sounds like the best option. I think the Pursuer is a tough boss this early in the game (literally tough, as in a lot of health). I didn't mind fighting him normally in Iron Keep as I do a lot more damage by that point. I haven't attempted the two Pursuer's in Drangleic Castle yet though. I'm sure that's pretty hard.

I find it funny that you consider Pursuer to be a ''long tedious fight'', only to then state you think Vendrick of all bosses is much better. I mean, that's kinda exactly how I'd describe Vendrick, even with all of the giant souls. To be honest I don't think Vendrick is a very good boss battle at all; there's nothing interesting about him beyond ''he has a lot of health and can often kill you in one hit''.

While Pursuer is also rather predictable, he still has more attacks up his sleeve and he most certainly does not take nearly as long to kill on average as Vendrick. Fighting the two Pursuers at once in the throne room in NG+ I think was pretty fun, too.

@yummylee: Pursuer most certainly does not have more attacks than Vendrick. About half, in fact. Also, the interesting thing about Vendrick is that he can chain some of his attacks together, or choose not to. Like everyone, of course he telegraphs a little bit if he is going to do that or not, but you'll have to pay attention if he finished an attack if he isn't going into another one immediately.

The reason I think the Pursuer is tedious, is because he is 100% predictable. Before he finishes his initial attack, I already know when I can attack him back. I fight Pursuer before I go to Heide or any other place, so I usually don't really do that much damage. He certainly takes more hits than Vendrick does. You fight him so late in the game that you're already rocking a couple of +10's and have reached soft cap in terms of stat scaling. I take him down faster than Pursuer in a traditional fight. Also, I don't see how Vendrick and Pursuer are that different in terms of damage output. Relative to when you are fighting them, you can take about as many hits from both. Only problem is that Vendrick chains his attacks like I said. But it's not technically a one-shot as he'll do it in several blows.

@zevvion: Pursuer has:

• His medium-range swing
• Which is then often chained into a shield bash
• Finally finished with either that twirl/roundhouse of his, or doing a vertical slam onto the ground.
• There's his lunge attack that can curse you.
• There's his charge sword swipe, which he likes to do the most and is also his easiest attack to avoid.
• There's also a shield bash he has that he'll sometimes do on its own without being apart of an attack chain or what have you. He'll sometimes use that medium-range swing independently as well.

Vendrick has:

• That long swipe attack
• Which he'll sometimes chain into a second or third swipe.
• The overhead vertical slam with his sword,
• Which he'll sometimes follow up with another one

He also has that hop backwards, but that obviously doesn't count as an attack. When you lay out their attack patterns like that, it's clear there's more going on with Pursuer than Vendrick. Vendrick often usually just keeps deviating between the swipe and the vertical slam of his sword... and that's it, that's the boss battle, which again I find lasts significantly longer than any fight against Pursuer. I find Pursuer more fun to fight anyway, because as I said Vendrick will often kill me with a single hit unless you have maybe 20 points into Vigor, which usually isn't the case for me, least until I head into NG+ maybe. Pursuer will usually kill you in 3 hits; the first 2 will most likely almost completely deplete your health, but there'll probably a sliver left.

In any case, Vendrick for me is often a boss battle that has no room for error, and with how boring it is at watching him do the same small series of attacks for so long, there have been times where I'll lose my focus or whatever and I may roll just at the wrong time or something. And any little mistake and I'm done, forced to once again sprint past the legion of Syan Knights if not fight through them all again.

Pursuer simply has more going on for him. After all, as was the primary subject behind this thread, you can actually parry Pursuer, and there's the ballistas hanging around to give it an additional layer to him. And of course, there's even the aforementioned platform you could face him on instead as well. Vendrick however I just find to be a terribly uninteresting boss battle overall, and is most definitely the worst 'King Boss' of the Souls series.

@yummylee: Yeah... You write one attack pattern of the Pursuer into three separate ones and you're missing about 60% of Vendrick's attacks. For starters, he has 2 ranged attacks. I don't see those in your summary. He also buffs himself when down to a certain amount of health. He also has multiple overhead slams. One quick, usually followed up with another one, one slow, which does a lot of damage. The fun thing is, even the quick one, he sometimes doesn't even follow up. Sometimes he does. The strong one, he sometimes does follow up with something else entirely, even though he mostly won't.

I think it's just more fun because he is more dynamic. Of course, the Pursuer has some dynamic to him, but I found it was far, far less than Vendrick. I have only fought Vendrick 3 times on my own and about 20 times in co-op, so it's hardly statistical proof. But let's say that for me, Vendrick has been a lot more fun due to his dynamic fighting.

I have no idea why you think Vendrick to be the worst 'King Boss' in this series though. Gwyn was awful. He could have been the first boss and would have still been easy. At least Vendrick poses some amount of challenge.

If I were to take your summary as base, it would actually be something like this:

Pursuer:

• Swing [Shield Bash, Pivot Swing/Downward Slash]
• Curse Stab
• Charge Slash

Vendrick

• Power Swipe [Power Swipe]
• Swipe Attack [Swipe Attack, Downward Bash]
• Power Overhead Bash [Swipe Attack/Downward Bash]
• Charge Stab [Swipe Attack, Downward Bash]
• Spiral Swing [Swipe Attack]
• Dark Buff
• Dark Orb variant
• Dark Hail variant

And then I want to point out that Vendrick uses all of his attacks whenever. He doesn't chain them together necessarily like Pursuer does. It's just a little less predictable which I enjoy. By the way, I'm not sure why Vendrick kills you in one hit. He shouldn't be able to. The more Soul of Giants you have in your inventory, the more damage you do to him, but I'm unsure if he also does more damage to you the less you have. Perhaps so, as I can take two hits of him (depending which ones of course) and still be alive.

Keep in mind though that he is a late game boss. You are expected to have fully upgraded armor and some rings by that point in the game, whereas you probably do not when you fight Pursuer. You don't need 20 Vigor. Of course, you'll probably need more than the 8 or so that you had while fighting Pursuer.

@zevvion: I have literally never seen him do any of those dark attacks you mentioned after facing against him three times, once in NG+. Not saying you're lying or anything, just for whatever reason he evidently never felt the need to use them against me. Also, I found Gwyn to be really difficult on my first playthrough as a pure melee character who's bad at parrying. But he's aggressive enough and is more versatile with his attacks that it was incredibly intense, whereas Vendrick was just the same two main attacks over and over. In fact for the longest time I somehow got him stuck in a loop of doing the overhead smash attack over and over again.

EDIT: I should clarify that by 'over and over again' i mean when it came time for him to attack after every few seconds like he does.

@yummylee: He does. You probably need to be a bit away from him before he does that attack. He jumps around sometimes. Sometimes that creates a bit of space between me and him. Perhaps that triggers it. I looked for a video, but everything I find is on the Vendrick boss fight, not King Vendrick. I assure you he does those attacks though.

Yeah, obviously Gwyn is tough if you don't parry him. But limiting yourself in certain ways makes any boss fight hard. Try Vendrick without rolling.

Pursuer only use the "Dark attacks" if you (or a friendly phantom) are cursed...
He curses you if he impale you while his sword is glowing blue... it can't be blocked (but evaded pretty easily).

And Venderick doesn't kill you in one hit. With SL 165, good armor (Throne's Watcher/Mirror Knight mish mash) upgraded and only 20 vitality, he didn't kill me in one hit on NG+. That said, all his attacks don't do the same amount of damage and the hit that didn't kill me was one of his three horizontal swing combo. It stunned me longer enough for his second sswing to kill me... Which makes 2 hits.

@zevvion: Uh, that hardly seems like a fair comparison... Rolling is obviously a lot more accessible (and potentially vital) than parrying. Trying to beat Vendrick without rolling sounds impossible, whereas Gwyn is clearly beatable without parrying. And it's not like I intentionally limited myself against Gwyn, either. I'm simply bad at parrying, it's not like I choose to be.

Oh doesn't he? My mistake. I guess I just imagined him killing me in one hit.

I don't know why, but reading this literally made me laugh. I'm so used to getting one shotted and two shotted by bosses that I forget that it's not a thing for everyone.

I can't wait until I can I finally remove my SL 99 limiter and remove my Company of Champions shackles. I'm getting annoyed by these SL 150+ invaders and their ability to kill me in 1-3 hits.

@zevvion: Not Parrying isn't intentionally limiting yourself; it's fighting the boss normally. It's just a censor of the modern games culture that it somehow became more popular than just normally taking on the boss and then that somehow impacted the general opinion of a very difficult boss (DIS BOSS SO EZ DAT I LOOKED UP DA GUIDE FOR or got advice for!); that's just dumb people. Parrying and Rolling aren't even remotely on the same level; but Vendrick without rolling is doable.

@fredchuckdave: Parrying is a mechanic that is in the game. It is accesible at any time when you are having a shield equipped.

Not using it intentionally, therefor is limiting yourself. You're just assuming that most people don't parry and therefor not parrying is 'normal'. It really doesn't matter what most people do, it is what the game offers to you. There is no secret to parrying. It is not an unexplained skill. It is in the tutorial even; in a game where almost nothing is taught to you. If you don't use it, that's on you. It is exactly the same as choosing not to use rolling.

@yummylee I just realized I was talking about Velstadt. Not Vendrick. For some reason I keep mixing them up. Apologies, I'm obviously a retard now.

@zevvion: Hahahaha, no problem. No yeah I also think Vestadt's a great boss battle, one of my favourites of the game.

Parrying =/= rolling. Rolling is straight forward and simple, you roll and if you aren't there when the attack hits it misses. Parrying requires exactly timing, if you fail you take the hit (normally the full damage), some attacks can't be parried at all (no such thing as an attack that can't simply "miss"), and quite frankly many people aren't very good at it because tons of enemies even when they can be parried are very very hard to get the timing for. The fact that in all the speed run videos I have seen the only boss they even try parrying on is Pursuer is fairly telling.